Posted
by
Zonkon Tuesday April 10, 2007 @02:41PM
from the that's-a-recipe-for-shovelware-kids dept.

Bloomberg is reporting on the publisher scramble for Wii titles, prompted by the console's explosive popularity since its launch late last year. Though the article focuses on EA's initial coolness on the console, they certainly weren't the only company that initially missed the bus. "Electronic Arts wasn't the only publisher slow to see Wii's appeal. New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., maker of Grand Theft Auto games, had no Wii titles when the player was released and now plans to have three this year, said spokesman Jim Ankner. Activision Inc., based in Santa Monica, California, plans to release six Wii games this year, giving the second-largest publisher a total of 11, said spokeswoman Maryanne Lataif." Though that's great news for Wii gamers, the question is: how many of these titles are going to be 'shovelware'?

Well, even if only 10% of the games coming out are worth getting, it will be that many more games that I might buy. And the experience the developers get by making a game for the Wii will (hopefully) make future games that much better.

Not sure I agree with your logic. You are assuming quality is constant. A deluge of titles probably means that 10% figure be weakened reduced even more than since you have developers scrambling (i.e. shovelware.) What is really going to happen in the next 15 months is that you will have to wade through more crap to get to the stuff you want. That said, I wouldn't mind a bigger Nintendo section to wade through 2 years from now. I do hope you are right that the developers 'get it' while they produce game

The Piper Jaffray analyst says, "They're going to need to get their best-branded product on that platform. That will take a good nine to 12 months."

But if the big publishers rush Wii tiles out the door, the Wii could get a reputation for having nothing but crap ports, and lose some of its appeal. On the other hand, with the lag time involved in video games, market share might be cemented before that could happen.

Yes, but nobody (even Nintendo) expected the Wii to take off like it has. So they didn't start things early enough and now see there's money to be made. What's the fastest way to that money? Pushing out crap.

Agreed. The industry has needed a major shakeup in design philosophy for YEARS coming, but noone had the guts to do it until now. Nintendo basically took the lid off of the boiling proverbial kettle. If the DS weren't evidence enough, simply the reaction from E3 should have clued everyone in.

Now, the degree of success is up for grabs, not even *I* thought that it would be THIS big, but my suspicions are not really that far off. The teeny-bopper XBox and PlayStation crowd didn't want to agknowledge the Wii's possible success, because of its threateningly, "family oriented" stance. A lot of the game press is teeny-bopper centric, so a lot of people were blinded by their own personal bias.

In retrospect, I probably should have proofread and better articulated my anti-Wii arguments.Imagine X years from now when Hot New Title comes out. Either that title exists for only one platform, or it's cross-platform. If it's cross-platform, then it will likely be the least appealing on the most underpowered console -- the Wii. If it's single-platform (or worse -- 360/PS3 only), then it will only cause Wii owners to become disenchanted with their bargain purchase. This is why people upgrade in the fir

If it's cross-platform, then it will likely be the least appealing on the most underpowered console...

I disagree. If power was that important, the PS2 would have died one year into it's life when the Gamecube and X-box (both more powerful systems) were launched. HD Graphics aren't as important as the typical gaming press wants to believe. Final Fantasy seems to have done well only supporting 480i.

People do want the best of what's available, but once again that doesn't mean graphics... So far EA has (surprisingly) been able to take several franchises and successfully launch them on Wii in a way that is new, better and more immersive than is possible on any other system. Madden, Tiger Woods, and The Godfather are all made better on the Wii by their intuitive and immersive control schemes.

I have a Wii60, and as pretty as Fight Night Round 3 looked on my HDTV, I can't wait to
buy Round 4 on the Wii.

Your problem, good friend, is that you think of "power" in terms of graphical performance.

I'd say the PS3/360 are VASTLY underpowered compared to the Wii - power being defined by an easy, intuitive, FUN interface. A cross-platform game on all 3 systems will sell far more on the more powerful system, I agree. That system being the Wii.

And what shakeup would that be? A gimmicky controller? Offering existing technology at a lower price point than its cutting edge counterparts? Unfortunately, I think consumers have looked at the bottom line and little else.

There is absolutely not evidence to back that up. During the last generation, the Gamecube was the cheapest console. The PS2 still won. People don't just run out and buy the cheapest console. People buy the Wii because it is genuinely a lot of fun to play with it.

That's really all there is to it.

If you still call the Wii controller "gimmicky," you do nothing but betray your fanboyism. Have you played "The Godfater: Blackhand Edition"? This game alone is proof that the Wii controller is anything but a gimmick.

People play with the Wii because they want to. Because it's an accessible and fun. No amount of good PS3 games can change this. The people who love to play Wii quite simply won't switch to the PS3 for games like FF or MGS.

And yes, if you can't see the change in game design philosophy from the GBA/PS1/PS2 to the DS/Wii, you're blind.

They didn't expect the Wii to sell, so they made a business decision not to support it. Now that it's selling, they are scrambling to start development for it.

Prior to launch, most people in the industry thought of the Wii as a cheap toy that would sell as good or worse than the GameCube, and they decided to throw their development dollars at the XBox 360 and the PS3 instead. They simply misjudged the market for the Wii.

Of course, if you believe the idea that the Wii is successful only because it has brought a whole new demographic (casual gamers) into the console market, these publishers that specialize in catering to the hard core gamer market may still not do very well on the Wii. Time will tell.

I'm 29 and while I can have fun with wii sports, I like games like GTA, sports games (WE/PES), FPSs and stuff like that. I used to be part of a Quake2 clan in the lanparty days. However, I decided to go for the wii (can't afford more than one console), because while graphics do matter, I'd rather have something somewhat new, more fun to play (so far the Wii has definetly delivered) than photorealistic graphics.. Wii's graphics are just good enough for me, I really prefer efforts be spent on other directions (diversification for example) than have the same games all over again just with photorealistic graphics and better AI. With the Wii I *can* have the games I already know, plus the oportunity to try out some new things (or new, funnier ways to do old things other than just a paintjob: I tried Godfather BHE on the PC, but the controls sucked. On the Wii it's a blast).

One of the things I find odd about this is that most of the people I know who are programmers, scripters or artists in game development were all excited about the Wii after the TGS 2005 showing and it was the marketing drones who thought it wouldn't be successful; at E3 2006 (after the marketing drones came across a 6 hour line-up at the Wii booth) companies started to be far more willing to devote resources to Wii games. In a way this is probably representative of what is wrong with so many publishers currently, they're so afraid to take a risk for fear of losing money that they end up missing out on the opportunity to make money.

I doubt the hardcore demographic is less present on the Wii than other consoles. Sure, it's a lower percentage of the total sales but since most actual hardcore gamers (i.e. not just graphics whores who'd shun a game for looking bad independent of how it plays, a hardcore gamer would accept 2d sprites if the game was good, some would even take ASCII) are interested in the Wiimote and the gameplay it might enable they are likely to buy a Wii. Never mind that many hardcore gamers are likely to own more than o

Of course, if you believe the idea that the Wii is successful only because it has brought a whole new demographic (casual gamers) into the console market, these publishers that specialize in catering to the hard core gamer market may still not do very well on the Wii. Time will tell.

I doubt it. A large number of people chose to purchase it because it was inexpensive. They will be looking for traditional games.

Nintendo usually has enough first-party titles in the pipeline to prevent that from happening. As a result, the third parties get a reputation for making nothing but half-assed ports to the Wii. Glad to see that not much has changed since the GameCube.:-/

Yep, that fits. Nintendo consoles have, since the N64, always been like that. Wonderful first-party stuff (and console-specific stuff from Rare), and mediocre third-party-stuff. Basically the same story now, but with Sega's Sonic Team taking Rare's place... although Sonic Team replaces the furstratingly-difficulty of Rare games with frustrating-camera-controls of Sonic games.

I bought a wii at launch time, and so far have been pretty disappointed. Wii Sports is nice, but every title I've picked up since then has been something of a disappointment - cooking mama is terrible, Monkeyball is nice but the minigames are hideously bad (and reviews of Sonic say it's more of the same), and the Metroid title promises to be singleplayer. I've yet to see a multiplayer title for the Wii where the multiplayer gaming is anything but hacked-up minigames.

I'm worried that the Wii will end up collecting dust the same way my DS does.

For the Wii I admit I've spent more time playing virtual console than Wii games (although Marble Mania and Elebits were at least worth renting), but I'm hoping that will change now with super paper mario. And for third party Bust-A-Move bash looks very promising, and I'm also really hoping that MK Armagedon will have online play of some kind (this might be hoping a lot, but I can hope).

But given all that I still don't see a reason to buy a PS3 yet (little bi

Despite of what the article says, EA has release three great games for the Wii. They started out with Madden, which was great for an early Wii title. Recently, they have released The Godfather: Blackhand Edition (which is absolutely awesome) and the SSX game (which is great if you're into those kinds of games). They've also released a few sub-par games, but even Tiger Woods is quite nice.

If they keep up that quality level, I'm very happy. I doubt the Wii is going to be another Cube.

Also, if you have a Wii and only own Wii Sports, Cooking Mama and Super Monkey Ball, you have no right to complain about the games. At least get Zelda, Excite Truck, Wario Ware and Rayman, in addition to the EA games mentioned above. There are quite a bit of great games for the Wii available right now.

Despite of what the article says, EA has release three great games for the Wii. They started out with Madden, which was great for an early Wii title. Recently, they have released The Godfather: Blackhand Edition (which is absolutely awesome) and the SSX game (which is great if you're into those kinds of games). They've also released a few sub-par games, but even Tiger Woods is quite nice.

I don't know about you, but I find Tiger Woods 07 DAMN addictive on the Wii. Even now I want to run home and play. Tiger, and Madden are much more 'Simulation oriented' (and addictive) than they ever were. Madden is simulating backyard 'double touch' football in an NFL setting and Tiger is simulating golf real nicely... I can't wait for Fight Night...

SuperPaperMario is a port, Zelda:TP is port, Galaxy, SmashBros and Metroid3 don't look like they couldn't have been done on the Gamecube either. Now neither SuperPaperMario nor Zelda:TP are crap ports, but neither are they the games that make me buy a Wii. Beside Wii Sports and a few other simple games with Wii in the name Nintendo has very little in the pipeline that really looks to be developed from the ground up for the Wii. So I am not really sure if the Wii can live on first-party titles alone in the l

The majority of "hardcore" gamers tend to be fixed in their ways; be it PC games or traditional consoles, they (not everyone) do not want something new. Why should they have to use the Wii nunchuck instead of the traditional controllers?

Exactly. This gamepad thing is never going to catch on. One button joysticks, [atariage.com] For The Win!

(dramatic pause)

We've been here before. Several times, in fact. We'll be here again. The "hardcore" gamers will adapt, just as they always have.

I hate to nitpick, but the 2600 didn't fail. It lived far beyond its intended lifetime. It was the followup (the 5200) that failed horribly thanks to Warner's mismanagement. If the 5200 hadn't failed, the 2600 wouldn't have been in the line of fire when the video game crash came'a'knocking.

Of course, games were still produced for the 2600 until nearly 1990, so it still wasn't a failure.:)

If people don't like shovelware, or crappy ports, then they just won't buy them. Nothing is going to lose it's appeal. Nobody is going to enjoy Mario Galaxy any less just because Elf Bowling exists for the same platform. They will continue to enjoy the great games, while IGNORING the bad ones.
A system will never suffer because of TOO MUCH shovelware. It can only suffer by TOO FEW great games.

I have to ask... are "crap ports" and "shovelware" really such a bad thing for the Wii, considering the new audience it's targeting?

It's pretty apparent that a significant part of the Wii's appeal is coming from casual or even "non gamers". These are not the players that get excited about a new Zelda game, or Metroid Prime, or Mario Galaxy, etc. Rather, they are comfortable with games with much more massive appeal (Wii Sports, Wii Play, various party games, etc.).

Sometimes that also includes licensed games (based off movies, TV shows, etc.), which are often regarded to as "shovelware" by hardcore gaming enthusiasts. Believe it or not, one of the better selling DS games in Feburary was Hannah Montana [gamespot.com], based off the popular Disney TV show.

As hardcore gamers (and yes, I am one), I think we often forget about the massive number of other gamers there are, that buy and enjoy these types of games (otherwise they wouldn't continue to sell the way they do). As much as I hate to think it, Nintendo could probably do quite well business-wise focusing on just the casual audience entirely. Sure, they'll lose much of the hardcore fanbase, but more than make up for it in other ways. In the meantime, they'll always have the Nintendo faithful on board no matter what they do (these are the ones that need their Mario/Zelda/Metroid-fix).

Mario is the best selling series in the world, to date, according to Game Informer last month. Zelda is something like 7th. WiiPlay is not. THAT'S your mass appeal for you. Anyone who says that Mario, Metroid, and Zelda don't have mass appeal hasn't done their research.

Mario is the best selling series in the world, to date, according to Game Informer last month. Zelda is something like 7th. WiiPlay is not. THAT'S your mass appeal for you. Anyone who says that Mario, Metroid, and Zelda don't have mass appeal hasn't done their research.

I don't think you get it.

"Mass appeal" in terms of the existing gaming audience? Sure. However, is it something your parents or grandparents (assuming they're not already gamers) would get into?

No, I don't think you get it... Super Mario Bros. 3 is THE BEST SELLING GAME, EVER, and that includes Tetris (not solitare, since that comes preloaded on every Windows computer). People may follow football because of their connections with the teams, but sports games don't sell as well as the average Nintendo franchise.

Sorry, you are wrong [wikipedia.org]. SMB3 was the best selling console game at 18 million. Want to know how much Tetris sold for the original GameBoy? 30 million. And that's only on that portable. There are countless Tetris games and clones available on the PC, web, mobile phone, PDA, etc. Yes, I'm aware that Tetris was a bundled game, and that skews the numbers considerably. But I'm more interested in the influence and mass popularity of games. Being bundled helped it tremendously, just like how Wii Sports is gaining mass popularity from being a pack-in for the Wii. (And on a small note, the original Super Mario game sold even better, since it was also a pack-in game. That has far more influence than its predecessor.)

Want to know another mass appeal game that has sold like crazy, and was released less than a decade ago? The Sims, at 16 million (and that number is probably out of date by now). Most hardcore gamers, myself included, thought it was a fun game, but quickly got bored of it and moved onto newer things. However, the vast majority of gamers (who are not hardcore, don't read gaming sites every day, etc.), keep buying expansion pack after expansion pack. I don't think those numbers even include the Sims 2 sequel either.

I am not saying that the Mario brand is insignificant. In fact, it is the most influential franchise out there. That said, I still disagree that a Mario game is going to be the pinnacle of a "mass appeal video game". The numbers are actually quite telling, if you take a look at the sales numbers of Mario games after SMB3. It's going down, not up.

Again, try going to your non-gamer friends and family, and ask them if they have ever played or heard of SMB 3, or if they look forward to the next Mario game. The answer will probably be no. That said, those same folks are probably giddy about American Idol, or Lost, or the next James Bond movie.

You're insisting that short, pick-up/put-down games are the only answer to mass appeal, but that is not really historically accurate, now, is it? You have to take into consideration that the moment that you get new people onboard, sooner or later they're going to want more, and suddenly, you've got a lot of people playing more involved games. Short games are short lived... either the person playing them gets bored of gaming and stops buying them, or they move on to more, bigger things.

I think you've fallen into the trap that most hardcore gamers fall into. That may be how we got into gaming. But why do you make the assumption that they're "going to want more"? The typical grandmother who has picked up a Wii because it's fun to play with her grandkids and maybe her friends from time to time, is not going to change her lifestyle and suddenly be into games like Zelda or Metroid, just because they happen to be on the same console.

As some who's in the casual games industry, I can tell you that most of the women that play our games adapt them to their lifestyle, not the other way around. Bejeweled gamers seek out similar puzzle games, and "bite size" games. They might try marginally more complicated games (such as Diner Dash, etc.), but there is such a huge leap to more "traditional" games, that your idea that they will eventually become fans of Starcraft, Call of Duty, Zelda, Metroid, Halo... is rather absurd. We just don't see it, and I've been in the business for a while now.

Though that's great news for Wii gamers, the question is: how many of these titles are going to be 'shovelware'?

Sugarcoating: Developers are going to port their existing set of games to the Wii, but they're going to spend hundreds of hours fine-tuning the controls for the Wii Remote. The graphics won't matter because it will be so much fun playing on the Wii!

Real Answer: Developers are going to do a half-ass port of existing games to the Wii, and they're going to spend most of their time removing graphical features and figuring out how to read "waggle" from the controller. Since no one will actually optimize their games for the ArtX chip, the graphics will be substandard in comparison to the first-party Nintendo titles. Even worse, the games will have all the "fun" sapped out of them as the publishers don't yet "get" the Wii.

I will probably get modded troll however this is just my honest opinion - I am bored of my Wii. I got one at the end of January. I didn't pre-order one as I wasn't all that sure it would be fun but I played on a colleagues one a few times and enjoyed it so decided to pick one up. I got Rayman, Zelda and WiiPlay as well.

At first it was a lot of fun however I soon found that lack of decent single player games and no online made the console a total bore for me. I tried to convince my wife that it was fun to play and while she did enjoy it the first couple of times she said it was "too robotic" which I do agree with.

I don't have people round the house all that often as we tend to go out. When we do have people round it is more to chat than play games. When I first got it and people came round we played but after an hour most people found the games too repetitive.

So basically it now sits under my TV doing nothing. I am a single player gamer and the Wii really doesn't work well for me. I had (still have but it is modded) an Xbox and used to really like Live however canceled my subscription after 2 years as I didn't feel I used it enough. I have thought about getting a 360 however it is too noisy for me so until they put in a quieter drive I won't be picking one up.

I really wanted to like the Wii however it just doesn't excite me, after the initial novelty wears off it does feel rather gimmicky and it doesn't really revolutionise gaming, it is just another form of input, it doesn't really add any additional depth to a game.

The Wii is interesting at the moment, not just because of its controller. It's so much more than that. First, you can grab all the used Gamecube games [wikipedia.org] you can handle. All for super-cheap if you know where to look. Which means that the Wii can be used to play all the cool titles you might have missed. (I highly recommend Donkey Kong Jungle Beat!)

Secondly, the Virtual Console [wikipedia.org] gives you all the classics under one roof. Whether you want to finally play Bonk, zip along with Sonic, relive Mario World or Mario 64, fly with StarFox, enter your favorite adventures with Zelda, or have a go at the hidden classics that you missed, the Virtual Console has a lot to offer.

I won't even get into the fun you can have with hacking your Wii through the SD Cards and WiiMote. (If you're into that sort of thing.) Suffice it to say that you can transfer your Miis to the Internet, play your favorite SCUMMVM games, use your WiiMotes to play your computer games, and other fun hacking possibilities.:)

So you're saying that the Wii is worth it so you can play games that you played years ago on obsolete consoles? I don't think that makes it worth the pricetag. I think at the end of the day, once the novelty of the controller wears off, the wii is a slightly-upgraded gamecube.

I really believe the "novelty" of the controller has yet to fully be explored. Zelda makes the best use of the remote to date for immersive gameplay (try playing the GC version then switch, it's really amazing), but the things only been out for 5.5 months. As far as backwards compatibility and the VC not adding value to the console, that's just craziness. It's really the main reason I bought one in December even though I knew there would be a title slump. I haven't owned a console in 8 (maybe more?) yea

I totally understand where you're coming from, but I've had a very different experience.Firstly, my friends and i have found ways of keeping the games interesting. No meters, No practice-swing golf stays hard and interesting. Just like Goldeneye got boring without structuring the games so that they stayed challenging, so must you adapt your wii gaming to being good at it.

I also look at things like the everbody votes channel as indicative of what's to come. I think they're clearly testing their servers fo

I don't know if I would say I'm bored, but that might be true. I really haven't played it much in the last couple months. I play the Virtual Console games a lot. I played Zelda a lot. I just played that Marble Game, which was a lot of fun but took about 2 hours to play all the courses. I'm waiting for a chance to rent Blazing Angles (I hear the reviews suck, but I want to fly around London and Paris for nostalgic reasons to see how well they mapped out the cities).

Just to shjow your not the only one getting old:"....after the initial novelty wears off..."reminds me of some og the complaints that was around when Pong came out.Yet here we are with outstanding games that were unimaginable then.

Wii may very well prove to go on to do some amazing things, or at leastr lay the ground work for them.

Ahem, I have seen that complaint several times. Once you ask a little bit more, those people know about Zelda, Wario Ware and Wii Sports... and thats it and then the loud complaint that nothing else worth playing is there.
Guess what:
Tiger Woods,
Heatseeker,
Godfather Blackhand Edition,
Elebits,
Kororinpha,
Excite Truck,
Super Paper Mario,
Metal Slug Anthology,
Sonic and the Secret Rings
All excellent single player titles worth playing.
All or most of them released or will be released within the next tw

Did you have a GameCube? If not, you have an entire library of amazing single-player titles to check in on. The GameCube's library might be small, but it's pound for pound, probably the best console library in existance. Some of the finest action games, finest RPGs, and finest platformers out there.Skies of Arcadia: LegendsSmash Bros. MeleeMetroid Prime 1 & 2Zelda: Wind WakerMetal Gear Solid: The Twin SnakesTales of SymphoniaMario Sunshine

I got one at the end of January. (...) I got Rayman, Zelda and WiiPlay as well.

Buy more games! Seriously. You can't expect one single player game to entertain you forever!

Here's a bunch of single-player games I like to get you started: Super Paper Mario (great fun), Madden, Trauma Center, The Godfather (the control change this from a mediocre GTA clone to an awesome festival of violence), Excite Truck (don't trust the reviews, this is fast, fun and, well, exciting), Elebits, SSX Blur, Sonic and the Secr

Perhaps, I guess time will tell. This is partly why I have not sold the Wii yet. However the outlook for decent single player games seems to be rather limp, or am I just missing some not talked about titles?

Well depends a lot on personal taste, but for now I'm having lots of fun with Zelda:TP, DBZ:BT2 and Godfather: BHE.DBZ is funnier when you play against a friend, but the adventure mode is addictive (warning: I used to be a SF2 junkie, so take it in context;))

Super Swing Golf doesnt get any talk, but I absolutely love it. Its got deeper swing mechanics than the Tiger Woods game for wii, allowing me to slice in the game as much as I do in real life.
It isnt realistic, but that adds to the fun. If you like golf, this is a solid buy. Its also a great party game, even if you have only one controller.

I'm not much of a gamer. I've never owned any console of any kind. I have played the Eye of the Beholder series of D&D games back in the day, and I liked Half Life 1/2 and Counterstrike. But I made do with whatever hardware I had. That's it.And now, my time is taken up by work, bills, etc. However, the Wii is really starting to appeal to me, as it seems like a console you can just play periodically without being a die-hard. And the (more) physical nature of it is appealing.

So? they can make a game where if your saber collides with another, they stay so for a moment (both 'pushing') and have the wiimote do some rumbling, then you have to go quickly to the 'blocked' position to match the screen and do something to start struggling with the opponent (nothing too long). and that might just be bosses, I'd buy in a second a game where I can go around a full level or map against, say, stormtroopers , deflecting shots and cutting away troopers, droids and doors or walls (no real resistance needed there, the saber should cut as through butter, but making it rumble while it goes through something would be extra-nice).

Give it time people! The Wii will come out with some legendary games, but it will take time. For one, developers don't have the experience with the Wiimote to implement it fully and functionally. Not only that, as online play becomes functional for games, the possibilities will increase ever more.

I picked up Need For Speed: Carbon the other day. Driving games are really fun for the wii, I must say. Now, all I need is a Star Wars game and a RTS game and we are set.

The fact that the big game companies were caught off-balance by the popularity of the Wii (clearly they were not reading SlashDot since last years E3 conference.) could be good for some of the smaller game companies. This will give them a window to launch titles and get some publicity and shelf space at retailers. In particular, HeatSeeker and Sadness both look interesting. The fact that the Wii is cheaper to develop for (I assume it's got a good SDK) and lower resolution (less time to do custom artwork) should also help the smaller development companies.

Heatseeker is somewhat hit and miss (it is released in Europe already)
they screwed up the two more interesting control schemes (nunchuck movement and analog stick movement)
while the mouse like wiimote controle scheme more or less works to a satisfiying degree.
This is a bummer, because the game itself is really good.
The wii currently is in the same situation as the DS was in its first year, it was a hit and miss phenomenon whether the control scheme is done right or wrong. Usually Nintendo are the firs

Holding z-trigger for strafing is a killer for most people who play FPSs. It worked great in Metroid because, again, Metroid isn't an FPS. But for serious FPS people who are used to Quake and Halo, you have to be able to strafe, aim, and move at the same time. I'm not an FPS player, myself, but most of my friends are, and every single one I've talked with said they would not play a series FPS, as an FPS, if it had the controls like Metroid Prime. This is why Metroid Prime did not appeal to the FPS crowd at all.

What I'm suggesting is that the nuncuck's motion sensors be used for turning, not for movement. The analog control is great for movement, and should still be used... although side to side on the a-stick would strafe side to side, the way left/right arrow keys (or A/D keys, more likely) are used on a keyboard. Tilting the nuncuck to the left would turn you to the left, tilting it to the right would turn you right. Tiliting it downward would look down, tilting it up would look up. This way, all movement and positioning are controlled with the left hand, and then the Wiimote is used exclusively for aiming, shooting, and switching weapons (via the d-pad, which would work wonderfully).

What it comes down to, is that publishers for the Wii need to understand what it's being used for. I know my Wii is pretty much used as a group activity. The great single-player games will be far and few between. I know I always have the most fun with my wii when a group of my friends and I come stumbling home from the bars and attempt to bowl & stand up at the same time. If ninendo plays it out well, the Wii could be the biggest thing in dorm rooms around the country since posters with alcohol and weed

I don't know if it's any good, but I saw one in Bestbuy that came with a steering wheel in the package. You slip the wiimote into the center of the steering wheel and use that to drive. It seemed like a pretty good use of the technology and IIRC unlike most driving games that come with a wheel, this one wasn't more than $10 over the normal price of a game.

I don't know if it's any good, but I saw one in Bestbuy that came with a steering wheel in the package.

If you want a bit of advice, don't waste your money on GT Pro [wikipedia.org]. The Steering Wheel attachment might make it tempting, but I guarantee that you'll regret the purchase. Try one of Ubisoft's better games, like Rayman. I have not heard anything about Monster 4x4 World Circuit [wikipedia.org], but I recommend that you be wary of it. Nintendo really had to strain the quality in order to round out the Wii launch titles.:-(

talking about racing games, i was looking forward to buy one for the wii and I ended buying Excite Truck. It is quite good, it has a nice single player mode. The two player mode is not as good as it could... although I have *yet* to find a good cooperative multiplayer game in any platform... (kinda like Mario Kart or Halo).

I think the best thing to do right now with the Wii is to have a Gamefly subscription (like netflix). Its a lot cheaper and less hassle than buying a game, discovering its total crap, and trying to hawk it on Ebay. If its a rather short game or lacks replay value, the gamefly ends up a better deal as well. I've sent some games back within 5 minutes of playing them. I'm sure there are equally bad Xbox games too, but some of the launch titles were definitely rushed on the wii.

I disagree. Force feedback would be ideal of course, and not just for fencing. It may even be necessary for foil where the limited target and right of way rules mean you are doing a lot more interacting with the opponent's blade. But I think a creditable saber game is very possible.The one thing that really "wouldn't work" in a fencing game would be when a opponent deflects your blade. However I think this problem is surmountable without force feedback. You could deflect the player's on screen blade, req

Actually, it's going to be VERY difficult to get the Wiimote to accurately map motion of sword play. Accellerometers are only accurate if they have some kind of opposing force to calculate off of, that being gravity. This means that all tilting or rocking motions can be correctly interpreted, but declination, position, and swivel are impossible to detect correctly. If you had the person point the Wiimote at the screen (with the IR pointer) before each fight, that would work well enough, though.

Funny you say this, since technically, the best systems have always BEEN the Nintendo ones up until this generation, developers just didn't "get" them either. But since Microsoft and Sony are now sucking wind too, they are being forced to actually work for once.

The only thing the Nintendo 64 did wrong was go with carts, but graphically it was better than the PS1, just more expensive to develop for because of those carts, and the only thing the Gamecube did wrong was launch late, since just about every bit of it was technically superior to even the Xbox.

You know, in my personal experience as a developer, for any reasonably modern system you can largely determine the power by looking at the RAM. The RAM determines how many polygons you can have, how detailed your textures can be, and if you run out of RAM, you crash. CPU/GPU etc mostly just determine framerate after you've squeezed all that content into the RAM. And at any rate, RAM is expensive so the console manufacturers never give us more than we can use.

no they where cartoony for specific problems resulting from the SGI chip used and developers inability to be innovative in light of those problems (Factor 5 is a great example of a developer who DID deal with the problem and made incredible games because of it), but from a completely technical standpoint the SGI chip was 5 years of development ahead of the chip used in the PS1 (and not surprising, since the PS1 was based on Superfancom hardware that was pulled out and replaced with Sony produced stuff when

Have you ever seen a PS game? Have you ever seen a N64 game? There's no comparison. The N64 beats the PS hands-down. The PS has one advantage: More storage space. That's it. Other than that, the N64's hardware, and the 3D capabilities in particular, are superior to the PS in every way.

As someone who's worked on a multiplatform Activision game, I can tell you that the size of the GameCube disk was never an issue for us. In fact, early in development we'd burn CDs for the PS2 version as they're cheaper to burn than DVDs (they just have longer load times), and CDs are dramatically smaller than Gamecube disks.

As a similar example, making PSP shovelware has never been a storage issue in the slightest for us, despite UMDs having less storage space than DVDs. Really, the only companies tha

In this era of XBMC and AppleTV, why isn't there even a simple media centre program available for the Wii with network streaming?

Because the Wii OS requires executables to be signed by the console maker, just like Windows XB (the Xbox OS). But unlike with Windows XB, people haven't yet found the fatal flaw in Wii security. People haven't cracked the Xbox 360 yet, and that's older than the Wii.

The Wii Remote seems to detect orientation just fine without using the optical sensor. The Wii Sports games illustrate this very well. In Tennis, Baseball, and Golf, the orientation of the remote is mirrored onscreen by the position of the racket/bat/club, all without having to point at the screen.

Or maybe you're complaining about something else, and I'm misunderstanding the problem?